Optimization-based Design of Product Families with Common Components

For many industries addressing varied customer needs means producing a family of products that satisfy a range of design requirements. Manufacturers seek to design this family of products while exploiting opportunities for shared components to reduce manufacturing cost and complexity. We present a mixed-integer programming formulation that determines the optimal design for each product, the number and design of shared components, and the allocation of those shared components across the products in the family. This formulation and workflow for product family design has created significant business impact on the industrial design of product families for large-scale commercial HVAC chillers in Carrier Global Corporation. We demonstrate the approach on an open case study based on a transcritical CO₂ refrigeration cycle. This case study and our industrial experience show that the formulation is computationally tractable and can significantly reduce engineering time by replacing the manual design process with an automated approach.